Any good 802.11x wireless security cams? (1 Viewer)

[Vince Maskeeper]

I know there is a school of thought that wireless net cams are not suitable for "security" -- in my situation I'm just looking to house a small camera to monitor the parking area of my building.

Unfortunately, I live in an apartment, and my unit is not adjacent to the parking lot, so running wires is not possible. Because I am not adjacent to the parking area, I have no line of sight to my garage space, and would like to wire up a small wireless camera hiddden in the corner so I could check in on the lot once in a while.

I started looking at some of the Dlink products- and they have some impressive stuff (control pan/tilt/zoom remotely from the net!)-- but most of the extra features are not really useful for me... especially for $500. Instead I'm interested in resolution and low-light sensitivity.

Also, to be honest, I don't even care about the "motion" aspect of the product-- I would happily settle for a camera which captured 3-10 frames per second at higher than 640x480 resolution and worked well in low light!

But I was hoping for something with:
802.11 b or g wireless with WEP encryption (pref a unit I could manually join to a specific network and would only participate with that network).
SOme sort of motion sense capture/email alert.
Ability to remote monitor (access the camera IP from outside the house).
Low light use, black and white is fine!


Anyone dabble in these and know of any product that might meet my needs?

 

[Chris]

The Dlink and Linksys stuff are pretty cornball. You might check at several of the security websites on line, Motorola makes one of the best, though expensive (yep, about $500) but it does do low light. The linksys, dlink and other solutions have cruddy resolution.

Alternative suggestion, get a good CCD camera and a capture card..

You might check 123security.com (I think) and elsewhere online.

 

[Don Black]

The Axis 2100 offers pretty good low-light captures and decent (albeit not 30fps) resolution. Mine were a little big buggy before I sold them but maybe that was because I don't know Linux and thus couldn't tinker with all of the network settings properly. ~$200/each.

 

[Don Black]

Just noticed that you needed wireless... I think Axis makes a wireless adapter but that might be too $.

 

[Shawn Solar]

From the aspect of a surviellence installer I would first look at lens size. 8mm 6mm and 4mm are about the most common lens sizes. 6mm will cover about 25ft area. this is at about a 10ft height. 8mm and up will give a closer image which if you can swing it, is better IMO. the closer the better with these types of cameras cause with these standard lens resolution will drop fast. Also colour is not nessacary, specially at night which brings me to infared cameras. The little bullet cameras that have all weathered enclosures are great for outdoors. though they have about a 15-20ish foot range at night. Any camera is still gonna need power too Whether battery or otherwise.

Its a tough situation. Are you allowed to wire in satellites? if you are then a camera wouldn't be much different except for a low voltage power line. I don't know of a consumer product that is wireless and provides a good picture in low light and is for outdoor use. Plus I mostly work with the more expensive commecial offerings. I will look into what is availble with my distributers.